A Personal Guide To Being Better
Sartre was a professor in France before becoming the biggest philosopher of all time. The only reason I know that, or who he is, is because of the anecdote my high school philosophy teacher used to explain difficult choices. The story goes Sartre’s student had a choice to make and asked Sartre what he “should” do. The choice was: either fight with French freedom fighters to combat the German occupation of France in World War II or stay and be there for his mother who was incredibly sad, and to whom he gave much comfort. Playing into this was his brother who died fighting the Nazis. His family mourned but that didn’t prevent his father from collaborating with the the Nazis afterwards. Also in the mix was the student didn’t know how much impact he’d have as one person fighting the Nazis but if he stayed with his mother he’d have incredible impact on one person’s life. But he wouldn’t be fighting for his country.
Ending his lecture, Sartre said “the whole point of this young man’s decision is that no one could give him an answer”. All Sartre told the student was he has an abundance of freedom.
What Sartre meant by that is the student had total freedom and power to make his decisions. But only he could make it.
Functionally, you have freedom to make a decision and the responsibility of bearing the weight of it. I always thought that nothing’s fair in war because if there’s war it’s not going to be fair; and then I understood that nothing’s fair in love. I’m going to hold on that, because it’s what made so many “should”’s stick onto me.
Nothing terrible happened. I’m a certain way, she’s a particular manner, and I have a decision. We’ve been growing farther apart for a long time; I distanced, she clung. Patterns began to form, and form, and for the first time there were specific things that we didn’t like about each other. And those things were hard to talk about. It’s sad. I wish I was telling you a love story. That’s not how it is. I can stay and hope I fall in love again, I can gently break up with her, or I can do nothing. Unfortunately there’s nothing I “should” do.
I’ve found values and action make decisions. What Sartre’s student did is a mystery, but to say that there is something that his student *should have* done would be to propose omniscience. At least that’s how it feels when I hear “should” — that there’s a correct path to take and other paths are damning.
The responsibility of it sucks. I have my commitments to consider, certainly the promises I made. “Nothing’s gonna hurt you baby” comes to mind. How was I supposed to know? Should I not do anything for fear of making mistakes? It’s terrifying making yourself known and the catch-22 is: getting better and smarter about living requires experience. Keeping ourselves from happiness chasing “should” or righteous feeling is no way to spend time. And it doesn’t make our loved ones any happier. Maybe it seems strange but the happier and stronger in our convictions we are, the happier we’ll be able to make the ones we care for… I’m trying to say good things happen when you enjoy living in your own skin.
I’ll end this with two very different dreams I had this year. In the first one, I dreamt a woman standing with a doctor told me I had something terribly wrong with me but she couldn’t tell me what. Then I had a dream I was a boy astronaut. I stood tall in a strange place and it let me see beautiful things. I was bold. I was scared in the first one — I was afraid of a scary monster that I couldn’t see that would maybe define me. You can be scared — you can. It’s very easy to live like that. You can not know what you want. You can walk paths that aren’t your own for the rest of your life. You can let “should”‘s sit in the pit of your belly til “awful” is just how you feel inside. You don’t have to though. It’s tough not to — It’s hard not knowing where you start and end. I had to look at myself and realize some things I didn’t like so much, some things I’m still working on. But you’re halfway done as soon as you start. And then you will know yourself a little better, you will be a little happier, and we will stand tall and topple giants.
